1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method, apparatus and program, and more particularly to an image processing method, apparatus and program for reproducing target colors by combining a plurality of coloring materials and a transparent material.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, to make color prints by printing or with a variety of printers, four coloring materials of Y (yellow), M (magenta), C (cyan) and K (black) are often used. A lot of lookup table (LUT) makeup methods have been proposed for representing, by coloring material colors, images which are generated by reproducing target colors by combining the four-color coloring materials from RGB color image data input from a scanner or acquired as the data. Likewise, a number of matrix calculating methods have been proposed.
For example, a method is proposed which determines by calculation the amount of the K (black) component to be used, one of the four coloring material components Y (yellow), M (magenta), C (cyan) and K (black), first, and then determines the amounts of the remaining three coloring materials, Y (yellow), M (magenta) and C (cyan) components, to be used (for example, see, Japanese patent application laid-open No. 6-242523 (1994)).
Although the method can achieve the target colors, it does not consider the amount of coloring materials used, which remain on a surface of a recording medium. In particular, when the pigment coloring materials are used, they have a characteristic that the coloring materials remain on printing paper in contrast to dye coloring materials. This results in unevenness of the total amounts of the coloring materials, the sum totals of the amounts of the coloring material components to be used, on the recording medium, thereby bringing about roughness on the printed surface. Such roughness on the surface has a problem of deteriorating the print image as a result of diffuse reflection of light on the surface. To counteract such a problem, a method is proposed which uses transparent toner for controlling glossiness of the image (for example, see, Japanese patent application laid-open No. 7-266614 (1995)).
However, an image processing method or an image processing apparatus has not been studied which limits the diffuse reflection of light in a thick-and-thin system using a thick-and-thin recording mediums. In addition, glossiness meeting user requirements has not been implemented.
The present invention is implemented to solve the foregoing problems. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an image processing method, apparatus and program capable of improving the image quality by suppressing the diffuse reflection of light in a thick-and-thin system. Another object of the present invention is to provide an image processing method and image processing apparatus capable of achieving the glossiness meeting the user requirements.